A series of violent anti-Semitic attacks have recently swept across Europe, with Ynet reporting yesterday that an elderly couple — Shmuel Blog and Auschwitz survivor Diana Blog — were assaulted during a burglary at their Amsterdam apartment last month. The couple was brutally beaten by two men who entered their home, bound them, and stole their jewelry and other valuables.
Immediately after the door was opened, two black-clad men burst in. They began to severely beat the couple. “I told them, ‘don’t hit my wife,”” Shmuel says tearfully, but the attackers paid no mind and knocked the elderly couple to the ground, kicking them repeatedly.
They then tied them up and began ripping Diana’s jewelry off her body. One of the assailants demanded to know where the jewelry was kept. Diana’s father was a diamond polisher, so there were more than a few pieces of precious jewelry and family heirlooms, some gifts from her parents, in the home.
“They wanted to chop off my finger because the rings didn’t come off fast enough,” Diana, who still bears dog bite scars, remembers as she cries. “They called us ‘dirty Jews’ and said: ‘You don’t need your jewelry anymore. You’ve been wearing it for too long. Now it’s all ours.'”
The Blogs, who had been living independently before the attack, are now confined to wheelchairs and Shmuel has lost his vision.
Newsweek reported earlier this year that anti-Semitic incidents in Holland rose by 71% in 2014.
The Jerusalem Post wrote today that a Jewish teen in Spain was assaulted in late August by a gang of neo-Nazis who carved Nazi symbols onto his arm. A week later, four young Jews were attacked at a tram stop in Manchester, England, according to The Times of Israel. The youngest, a 17 year old, was hospitalized with a brain hemorrhage.
A 17-year-old Jewish teenager was beaten unconscious at a train stop in Manchester in a suspected anti-Semitic attack on Saturday night, the Manchester Evening News reported.
Three other Jews — two 18-year-olds and a 20-year-old — were also hurt in the assault. Police are treating the incident as an anti-Semitic attack. …
Police said the group were approached by three men as they waited at the Bowker Vale Metrolink station in northern Manchester at around 11:30 p.m. The assailants hurled verbal abuse at the victims and then physically assaulted them.
i24 wrote today that the Community Security Trust, a Jewish advocacy group in Britain, reported that anti-Semitic attacks in London have risen by 93% in the past year. Across Britain, anti-Semitic incidents increased by 53% in the first six months of 2015 as compared to the previous year.
[Photo: Branko Collin / Flickr ]